Although they still face prejudice in many parishes, believers from the LGBTQ+ community find comfort in their faith during difficult times. Especially since Montreal churches also celebrate Pride Week.
“Even after 40 years of being openly gay, every time I meet a group of people, I wonder if it’s safe for me. [de leur révéler mon orientation sexuelle] and how they will react,” says Bertrand Olivier, the dean of Christ Church Anglican Cathedral, during the Pride Service held there. The place is one of the few churches in Montreal that mark the occasion.
“The whole community is not very open, we have our battles”, recognizes Reverend Olivier. The Anglican Church, located in the heart of the metropolis, however, wants to be a welcoming place for the queer community.
Montreal is a city where “people from all walks of life” coexist, and the Church only reflects this diversity, underlines Mr. Olivier. In the Anglican faith, each ecclesiastical province is independent, and the fact that power is not as centralized as in the Catholic Church allows parishes to evolve at their own pace, he notes.
When I’m dating someone, it’s not identifying myself as bisexual or transgender that makes me nervous, but identifying myself as a Christian.
The priest recognizes on the other hand that there is still “a lot of lack of confidence [envers les Églises] from the LGBTQ community.
A quest for acceptance
This mistrust is also reflected on the ground: being accepted as queer and Christian can be difficult for people who value these two parts of their identity.
“When I’m dating, it’s not identifying as bisexual or transgender that makes me nervous, but identifying as a Christian,” says Noah Hermes, a member of the Anglican Church for six years. “I’ve lost friends from Quebec who think I’m sectarian because I go to church,” says Tevfik Karatop, a gay man of Lutheran faith.
After attending a drug rehabilitation program as a teenager, Noah was inspired by the spiritual component of exercise. In his quest for an inclusive spiritual community, he landed at Christ Church Anglican Cathedral.
I’ve lost Quebec friends who think I’m bigoted because I go to church
For others, the journey was longer. Originally from Turkey, Tevfik was born into a Sunni Muslim family, but converted to Christianity 10 years ago. It was only after a long journey that led him to Montreal, where he arrived as a doctoral student in marketing, that he found an inclusive community. “I was going [d’abord] in a Finnish Lutheran church in Istanbul […]I realized that they [les fidèles] were homophobic and I never went back. »
It was not the first time that Tevfik faced such discrimination: “Over there, [en Turquie]everyone agreed on homophobia: Muslims, Christians, secular people…” Today, he is active in many Christian circles in the Quebec metropolis and works for a Jesuit organization helping refugees.
A liberating faith
Tevfik explains that, for him, being openly and guilt-free gay corresponds to his belief in a loving God who wants his followers to accept themselves. This idea of liberating faith also resonates with Noah, who found “God’s love” to help him through the difficult times of his transition.
Asked how they reconcile with the traditional positions of the Christian Churches, which are often patriarchal and homophobic, they emphasize that their personal reading of the Bible is done with knowledge of the context in which it was written. “It’s a collection of various people’s experience with God over the years, in the context that they were in, in the way that they could understand it,” Noah explains.
For Tevfik, the historic rejection of the LGBTQ+ community by churches only strengthens his determination to transform them: “It is easy to go home and close the churches, but we have work to do for reconciliation. . »
An uncertain future
However, the place of queer people is not unanimous within the Canadian Anglican Church, with some bishops notably opposing same-sex marriage. “The Church will always be 20 years behind, but it’s moving in the right direction,” says Noah.
For Tevfik, “there will be islands of freedom” despite the negative reactions of some faithful. “There are spaces where you don’t have to sacrifice any of those parts of yourself. We can be fully Christian and fully queer, all in our messy little package,” says Noah.